In today's competitive market, the final 25% of the sale is more critical than ever. This last phase isn't just about closing the deal; it's about laying the groundwork for a successful onboarding experience. Sales teams need to ensure they are scoping projects accurately and setting clear expectations. This involves collaborating closely with SMEs and other team members to guarantee no money is left on the table and, most importantly, that customers walk away satisfied and confident in their decision.

During this webinar, we'll explore strategies for effective communication and coordination during this pivotal stage. We'll discuss how to manage the risky hand-off process and ensure a seamless transition into the actual onboarding phase. Our goal is to equip you with the knowledge and tools necessary to enhance your sales and onboarding processes, leading to happier customers and better business outcomes.

Let's get started on transforming the way we approach the final 25% of the sale and setting the stage for exceptional customer onboarding!

Key Topics We'll Cover:

  • What is a complex customer onboarding experience?
  • Close of the Sale and SMEs: Learn how onboarding should start at the sale close.
  • Better Handoffs: Improve transitions between teams for a seamless customer experience.
  • Onboarding and Mutual Plans: Develop effective onboarding strategies and mutual plans.

What You’ll Learn:

Actionable Tactics: Gain specific strategies to enhance your onboarding process, drive customer success, and reduce the workload on your onboarding team.

Transcript:

00:00 – 2:38

Joseph Knecht: Introduction

Quick introduction. Of course this is the webinar and presentation related to: Emerging trends in Customer Onboarding.

And the shocker moment there of…we’re actually talking about the final 25% of the sale, right? So it's kind of contradictory, “customer onboarding,“ and we're talking about the sales process. But we're going to unpack that a little bit more here, and probably why you signed up for this event is because you're seeing what's going on and the big trends around this.

And so today we're going to go through 4 trends. Each one of these trends has a lot of sub-elements to them. So I'll be discussing quite a few of those just to kind of elaborate and also share just some use cases, obviously, that we're seeing from the field. One of the things—and we like to do on all of these webinars that we do is, it's not just obviously PowerPoint slides—it's sharing different use cases and other things that are kind of going on in the world of this—to kind of bring these things to life for you.

So quick introduction on my side, Joey Knecht, one of the senior leaders here at Proteus. We're based out of Lincoln, Nebraska, clients, of course, all over the country. I appreciate your time here today on this kind of emerging topic, right? And again, like I mentioned, for onboarding specialists and onboarding leaders, this is something that we're seeing more and more changing in the relationship of—so you guys all know I'm preaching to the choir here—but customer onboarding for all companies, kind of land, sometimes in different areas within the enterprise, right?

Sometimes that's under the sales team. Sometimes that's a whole separate division or unit for customer onboarding. Sometimes it's bannered under the client success ecosystem. So bear with me as I go through some of these things in a general presentation. You know, I'll kind of try to highlight all the different kind of elements to that.

We've been in this business for more than 20 years. And what I'm going to share with you is some of the things—especially over the last 3 to 5 years and rapidly you're experiencing it, but are changing now, are these emerging trends where we're seeing customer onboarding specialists and people on the onboarding side or the configuration side, joining inside the sales process?  So we're going to unpack here, 4 really major trends that we're seeing. And please, if anybody has a question during this, don't  hesitate to fire it out, because maybe others are thinking of it. You can stop me at any point in time. All right, so let's get started. Let's have some fun around this.

[2:38] Screen showing slide: Trend 1: Environmental Shift

02:38 – 7:54

Joseph Knect:  Trend 1—Environmental Shift

I'm very passionate about it, because it's a big shift, and I think you're probably seeing it. So the first place we're going to start the trend is the environment has dramatically changed. And so this is the part of the presentation where I'll say I'm 46 years old and just in my short career here, this has dramatically changed on the number of people involved in the sales process and the onboarding process here, right? 

And what we're talking about here today is really that last 25% of the sales. So mind map with me here for a second and just think about this related to your own process, right? You have your sales team clearly in your marketing team, and they're doing a great job. Generating leads…maybe MQL's (Marketing Qualified Lead). Then they're becoming Sales Qualified Leads for you, right? And then you're starting to get into your prototypical sales process. But I think we can all be candid. There's a certain point in that sales process where it kind of…I like to think of it in simplistic ways. You're kind of going from dating, to looking to get married, right? And what happens is that inflection point, your internal champion on that sales process, is now looping in. (Excuse me)

A tremendous amount of stakeholders on their side to go through now—the decision and alignment process, right? And I, I think you guys all understand where I'm going here. So the “n” of people, the number of people just now that last 25% of the sale is happening, you're starting to get a tremendous amount of stakeholders coming to the table, who all—each kind of individually in many cases—have a different perspective on that sale.

That could be the users of it, could be security, could be other people related to operationally, leadership—you name it—that buyer side is now getting pretty intense, right? You got a lot of players in this situation here. And this is where the shift then starts to happen on your side—in the last 25% of the sale and for many of our clients obviously, they're offering more of a complex solution. I think everybody who's attended here today kind of knows we're not talking about a $5 a month kind of solution. Or, you know, a simple service. Right? We're talking about services that have a good value, and, you know, involve a more complex decision-make environment. It's kind of a presumption around all of this, right? So now, on the buyer side, you have anywhere from 7 to 10 people. And now, on your side, the onboarding team, you're getting heavily involved and what I mean by that is, it's not only the original sales rep., maybe sales leadership.

What you're bringing to the table now is your subject matter experts (SME’s), your consultants, all the people who kind of know, in essence, the devil in the details of the process of your products and services,  to help with the alignment on obviously the buyer side. Right? So what is starting to happen in the last 25% of the sale and bear with me—I'm a sales rep.—I've been selling for 30 years. In many deals nowadays, the client is really buying, not from the sales rep. The client is really buying with the trust and the confidence of your SME’s, your consultants and the onboarding team, who basically understand their problem, needs, and wants very, very clearly and they're aligning them for success.

So that last 25% in essence is the first step in onboarding. And this is the trend we see tremendously going on here, because the clients have a tremendous amount of risk. You've all been there, right? There's risk, there's switching costs, there's fear—there's all these things that are happening, and they're not relying on sales to just say, “Yes, trust me, this is going to be great.” No, they're actually wanting to understand your onboarding process, and how that's going to come to life here.

Okay, so that's the first major, major shift. So you have the sales process. But that last 25 is basically you're sold. You're sold already, right? And so that's…

Chad Wisneski:  Sure…about Friday now.

Joseph Knecht: Chad, did you have a question? Oh, I'm sorry.

Chad Wisneski: Nope.

Joseph Knecht:

Okay, so good.

Basically, in that process, you have anywhere from 7 to 10 people on the client side. And again, anywhere from 7 to 10 people on your side. So this is really one of the first major trends is that, as you might imagine, the number of stakeholders has ballooned in purchasing a  solution. So that's the first one. And that really then creates a lot of the trickle down problems of the last 25% of the sale, or basically the challenges of it—and how this all comes together. So that's trend one.

So apply that obviously to your environment, truth or not. Obviously, it might only be for your enterprise clients—maybe not all clientele—maybe by what product they're buying from you. The experiences might be a little different. That's okay. But you have to understand that this, from a resource perspective, your onboarding team, or your implementation team staff, a lot of them are now needing to be inside the sales process. Which means you better be qualifying the clients, really well, also so you're not wasting resources, right? So that's a big piece of this last 25%. Okay? Trend one. That's the reality of that.

Let's dive then in after trend one, it's the complex deal alignment.

[07:58 ] Screen showing slide: Trend 2: Complex Deal Alignment

7:55 – 14:17

Joseph Knecht:  Trend 2-Complex Deal Alignment

“Equipping Your Champion”

And so I've talked about some of these things, and I kind of put this here. It's probably a few too many things, but I know in a general webinar I want to make sure it's broad structure here. So what we're seeing in a lot of complex deal environments again, last 25% of the sale, is in the need to equip your champion for success. And this is kind of that ecosystem where again, you're selling into the client 75% of the way through the sale. The last 25 you're starting to then get the meat with the potatoes, which means you're defining scope. You're defining the need set. You're defining integrations. Right? You're defining a lot of things that are going to greatly affect the price, the onboarding, the environment, everything here. So these are some of the common things that we're seeing that are being pushed up higher into that last 25% of the sale. And it's one—equipping your internal champion for success.

So I know the target audience of our call today is onboarding leaders a lot of times, but again, sometimes onboarding sits in different departments. But what we're seeing is, if during the sales process you're not equipping the champion correctly, meaning not people from your team—we're talking about the person who is the champion on the deal at the potential customer side—you need to be providing him or her the right materials, the right resources, the right things to fight that internal battle that they're having to keep your deal alive.

You've all heard that ghosting kind of concept. Well, this is when that starts to happen in that last 25%, because it's switching again from, In general, do we want to work together? Yes—how are we going to work together? And that shift creates a lot of pressure on your champion on the internal side, to be able to position your product, your services, your company correctly—and a lot of that has to do with the devil in the details. Right? So it's something to really consider. This is where the deals get lost, or you know, “ghost away”.

Channel or Reseller Involvement

Some of you might also be selling through a channel or reseller environment which just adds another whole layer of complexity to these deals, because you're involved in a co-selling environment now at the last 25%, which increases the amount of communication and complexity around that and many of our clients our direct selling and for all their products.

And then some products are actually going through channel or resellers. So they're kind of co-selling. And we have different processes, obviously, and proven ways of doing that. But how do you create that visibility and continuity again, during that? I have alluded in Trend One the next couple of items already for you. But also mind mapping to your environment.

Subject Matter Experts and Consultants

Think about—every company calls them different—but subject matter experts, or consultants, or architects. You know what I'm talking about. All of those team members—might be yourself—having to be looped into that last 25%. So you can help make sure the qualification of the client is on point, and expectations are legit and you're not bringing on somebody that false promises are being led to, because that's going to destroy your onboarding—like a lot of times when the onboarding of a client happens and goes sideways, or the deal dies completely.

It was heavily based on miscommunication during the earlier phase, AKA, the last 25% of the sale, because promises were being made or things were just being pushed to the side, because we have a revenue growth number we have to get to. And that revenue growth number we're going to get to, no matter what. But that's actually going to be one of the other trends that we go through here, which is GIGO, “garbage in-garbage-out.”

Professional  Service Team Members

And so these are some of the things again, I'm trying to lay out. All four of these kind of are interrelated and you might not be able to, as the onboarding leadership, control this. But this is something to be very aware of that for the sales process this needs to be highly considered. For instance, many of our clients have professional services, and they're selling product. Right? So you have a professional services deal on top of a deployment of a software which gets even more complicated. And again, if you go back to the bridges concept, you got even more people in there, and so how you create that continuity during the last 25% of the sale, the handoff right, and then the actual onboarding.

On-Prem and Install Options

I'll throw out for some of you—when I looked at who was attending, there's many of you that I'm sure have some on-prem. installs. So we have many clients that they're not only selling the software, they have professional services, but maybe then the install is by somebody else. Right? So all of these things have to clearly be architected during that last 25% of the sale, again, for not leaving money on the table. But then, also helping to understand, how are we truly going to onboard you?

So the onboarding process is basically figured out in the last 25% of the sale. And then for many of our clients, those same key people are going to carry through to the actual implementation. Does that make sense? So a lot of this is just moving into that last 25% of the sale to make those handoffs less risky, making sure that there's alignment on there, and you can read the other ones.

There's many other elements to this. Many of our clients are phasing things out, right? You got security and procurement audits. All of this is happening still on that last 25% of the sale. And quite frankly, you guys haven't made a dollar yet.

And this is the risk. This is the front end expense now in complex sales—it is heavy, heavy cost, but obviously, it can be rich rewards when done correctly. And so these are the things—whether it's your team or your sales team—that you're leading with. These are the things to consider because the deals go way smoother, and you also, obviously aren't leaving money on the table.

Security and Procurement Audits

So the complexity is now pushed of onboarding, into the actual sales process. All right team, so just again, that varying kind of parties on here today, you can think through how that might affect or segmentations of this, that you want to move into that last 25% of the sale again, because if many of you will wear the hat of onboarding, it's managing your risk, right? Managing the risk, making sure clients are happy. You can only do so much. There needs to be strong alignment and trust there.

[14:18 ] Screen showing slide: Trend 3: GIGO Garbage In/Out

14:18 - 18:58

Joseph Knecht: Trend 3-GIGO

All right, trend 3.

So this…this kind of…to be great, one of our values in our organization is candid, right, candid. And so this is kind of where that rubber hits the road. So I've  talked about “garbage-in-garbage-out.” We have seen clients who have come to us, and they say, “We're struggling, we're losing a lot of people. We're ghosting. We're losing deals, or “The clients are frustrated in what's going on,” and what we looked at, as we start to help them align their process into our platform Engage, is that they weren't getting the right information early enough in the sale—AKA—the last 25% of it, to properly align the client and set the right expectations with the client, right?

And you've all been there—scarily. You're onboarding a new client. And then they say, “Okay, and now you guys have an integration with Kabuki Plus” or, I'm sure you've all been there, right, or “We're getting your credit card transaction module for free too, right?  Or “Your reporting module for free, too?” or whatever it is. And you guys are all like, “Uh…yeah, no,” and/or, “We don't even have that,” or “What is Kabuki?” Right?

And so there are these awkward moments that these tough conversations actually need to happen earlier in that sales process—AKA—the last 25%, and that level of knowledge is only available from your sales engineers, your onboarding team members, like yourself. Those are the tough conversations that have to happen because we were bringing on a new client of ours, and they had calculated that in the last year they had mispriced deals by up to10 million dollars, because they had a complex what modules, and like what servers it could kind of be on.

Leaving Money on the Table

And so they were onboarding clients, and the client would be like, “Well, we have 5 of these, 4 of these, 2 of these,” and they weren't figuring that out properly during that obviously last 25%, and they were leaving a ton of money on the table, even losing some clients, right? And so again, “garbage-in-garbage out.” So you have to think to yourself, kind of the Three Bears.

Good Data Collection is Key to Closing the Deal and Onboarding

Too little information—not going to be good. Too much information could be overwhelming during the sales process. So you’ve got to find that porridge that is just right. But that data has to be meaningful. It has to help you align what that journey is going to be. But there are some big headwinds with that, because sales will perceive that as you're slowing down our deal, right, or other things. You've all been there.

Due to the Complexity and Volume of Stakeholders This Problem Magnifies

So you have to work out what is the really key information that we need, and make sure that it wasn't just transient—that you're collecting the right data, the right information you're collaborating with the client on, and really confirming with them and setting those expectations clearly—because there's a lot of just, “Let's hurry up. Let's hurry up. Let's get the deal done. It's towards the end of the quarter.” But the problem is that kind of rush frequently leads to frustration, leaving money on the table, and the handoff process is really bad. So you can kind of see here, they start to build. You got a lot of people which, of course, is going to create a lot of problems. So you got to get out of email—like it is not an onboarding solution. Sending an excel file back and forth is not an onboarding solution. Right? You got to create an environment where there's complete centralized visibility on everything that is going on during these critical phases of the process.

Source of Truth Not Via Emails

And for many of you this is over a term of 6 months, to a year-and-a-half of that last 25% to the sale, you know, and then the handoff, and then the actual onboarding could be up to 2 years. So you need to create an ecosystem where you're able to manage this, control this, have visibility on this. And again, email, is death.

Timely and Correct Information – Visibility on What the Heck is Going on Here?

Ironically, some of you might be experiencing this already, but we have a lot of clients and regulated industries. So we sell them into like financial services. We, you know, banks, we have a lot of healthcare kind of clients, a lot of regulated industries, in short. Many of our customers actually already are not accepting any out…in email inbound, they’re just they're not accepting emails. So you can't even email them back and forth, basically, so you have to have these kind of secure environments to do this. So that's another huge trend on top of the ones I'm talking about, email is dying. And so yeah, it's just something to really think about as you're continuing your journey maps here. All right. So trend 3—a ton of spec., ton of information has to go back and forth right to achieve this.

[18:59] Screen Showing slide:  Trend 4: The B2B Experience Does Matter

18:59 -28:07

Joseph Knecht: Trend 4-The B2B Experience Does Matter

So here's trend 4. So this is kind of funny…so trend 4 is the B2B experience does matter. And so some of you maybe I've talked with in the past or anecdotal stories. So one of the things to think about in that last 25% of the sale all the way, you know, to the handoff, and then to the onboarding, is basically ensuring that this is a pleasurable experience for your clients. So here's something to ask yourself. And this is kind of a challenge I frequently put out…If you order a Domino’s pizza right now and you're spending 12 bucks, you can watch that pizza. Basically, the dough, the toppings you wanted. You can watch it go through the oven. You could see it getting into a car. You can get real excited because it's 3 minutes away, and then you're getting all excited, because, you see, it was at your door, and you get a text message, right? And that's on a $12 transaction, maybe nowadays $ 20 or $25, or $30, whatever… chipotle…crazy prices, right?

Like, I know, it’s crazy out there. But back to the point. The point here is your expectation of a B2C transaction, for pizza is very high, right? Onboarding, and B2C Businesses need to step up their game. The expectation of their clients—of your clients—is a good experience, and what we see when we're onboarding some of our new clients, clients to our company, is that most of the onboarding is done in a very haphazard, not centralized, and definitely not a good experience to the customers, because in the customer there are different levels of people, right?

You have the leadership that originally bought the solution, or the executive sponsor where the money's coming from, your cost of your service is $50 to $1 million dollars. So they're putting a big expense into this. There's a lot of risk with this. How are you properly communicating, collaborating, centralizing—making all the things for them highly excited for you?

Because here's the other trend that is very important around this, and I've alluded to it in a couple of the conversations and trends now, is the cost of doing business—the CAC, customer acquisition costs, your CAC Is very, very high…extremely high. We already discussed—you might have 5 to 7 people working on this deal before a dollar even hits your bank accounts. This is a high risk, right? And so with that said, you got a ton of people. You're investing a ton of money. But now your buyers—and I am assuming this is happening to a lot of you on this call—is this is not your only onboarding with this customer.

Most companies nowadays are wanting to again, using the same metaphor, date before they fully get married. What I mean by that is, they're launching with you for only one, maybe module of their platform, or they're only working with you for a small professional services contract first. And they want to air quote, “test the waters,” right? Testing the waters. Well testing the waters can either be really good for you or horrible for you if the onboarding that last 25% and the actual onboarding aren't handled in a good experience, because that's how they're going to judge you. We all know you never get a second chance to make a first impression. I have no idea where that came from, but someone can comment in the message to help me out.

But basically in point here, is we have to focus on that the experience was good for the client, because in most cases you are going to be onboarding these people again and again and again, hopefully over the 3, 5, 7-year cycle that you have a relationship with these.

Targeted Persona Sharing—Stop Deal Killers

So that the requirement now is not only just to get them in, get them out fast. It's making sure that you're creating a repeatable experience that is pleasurable to the client, because for many companies they're not making any money until year 2 of that contract. Year one has already been, any profitability has been sucked up by the CAC (customer acquisition costs). And you guys, your companies are only making money, if that client in essence renews or continues on in that passion. So the experience does matter, right? Very, very important to this. So there's a couple of…there's a lot of items again on the screen here again for a broader audience. Probably, personally, where we see the big impact and helps people move…move the needle pretty aggressively is that targeted persona sharing and stopping deal killers in that last 25%, and quite frankly, you know, preventing “Negative Kens or “Negative Nancys,” even in the onboarding process, right? Because you want the right spirit for adoption and the going, so targeted persona sharing.

What I mean by that is, you kind of as an onboarding specialist and onboarding leader, you kind of have to flip your methodology. Obviously, there's process. And of course, our tool has checklist systems and all these things to help, you know, eloquently run process. But you also have to think about, Who blows up deals in that last 25%? And who's important when we're actually onboarding them? And many of our clients are creating specific content and information and engagement with those targeted personas. That targeted persona might be like the chief technology officer or security officers. If you're getting audited for your products, think about who the people are that can assist in getting this deal over the line in that last 25%.

Transactional vs. Continuous

That's your role of helping that, right, complexity with the technology or whatever it might be. But then also, during the onboarding process, where are the trend lines of people blowing up deals or slowing it down, because ultimately time to value for your clients is the biggest thing, right? So you've gone through this long sales cycle, last 25, now you're onboarding them. What your client wants to see is time to value. Meaning obviously, they're up and going, and you're able to show something for it. So you want to try to knock down any of those barriers, whether it's in the deal cycle, last 25, or when you're doing the handoff and onboarding. The spirit of that does not change depending on the phase. Right? Ultimately, it just doesn't, right?

And also, the other kind of important one on this, is thinking more of the relationship during the last 25% and the handoff. And then the onboarding is more continuous than transactional; and a lot of times onboarding has been kind of this place you go, and then you get out of as fast as possible. Now you do because you want it to get live.

But, like I alluded to, what we're seeing heavily in the marketplace is continuous onboarding, meaning you're launching, but it…the launch is based in 6 phases, and so you might be launching for the next 18 to 24 months with the client. And so you need to obviously have an environment to bring that all together. Okay, so these are the top 4. Obviously, there's a ton of subs. so that's not just 4, but these are the things that we're seeing extensively in complex B2B sales.

Again, our portfolio of clientele ranges dramatically from manufacturers to tech companies to professional services. We have governments. We're in all verticals. And so we're seeing pretty much across all of those, the same kind of incrementally moving a lot of the onboarding validation, process-related stuff of getting people onboarded, into that last 25% of the sale.

The why, behind that, of course, is risk of customers not wanting to sign the line that is dotted until they fully understand what everything is going to happen, (Excuse me)  and how that is going to happen. Right? So that's why we frequently say onboarding is now happening in that last 25% of the sale. And it's true. I mean, it's just true. If your group isn't doing that at all, it's… I have something you should definitely consider because it's showing massive results for these clientele, and of course helps with that handoff because you're really not handing off anymore. Your team is already ramped up on a lot of the intel, right—the needs, wants and expectations. The handoff risk is greatly mitigated. And then you're getting into onboarding, actually setting them up much faster. There's less contention, there's less unknowns, right? Which means then they're getting live and seeing value faster. So the multiplier effect of starting this early and quite frankly—as I mentioned earlier—if there is going to be…and there is…it's the real world, any kind of tough conversations, you're having them way earlier in the relationship than you're having to go back to people 6 months from now and say, we have a big problem with, you know, the client, etcetera, right? So big 4 trends. Hopefully, they help with you.

[28:07] Screen showing slide:  Challenges for Onboarding Leaders

28:08 – 29:55

Joseph Knecht: Challenges for Onboarding Leaders

So one of the things this kind of relates back to is challenges for onboarding leaders here, is again, what we're seeing when onboarding leaders come to us, is they're needing help now with this deal alignment and scope alignment which is happening in the sales process again—last 25. It could be 10. You guys know where I'm going at there, right?

 It's basically—it's a matrix based team now. Everybody is involved in this solution set. And so you need to have an environment that can support that, so deal alignment, scope alignment; deal is more on the money side, scope is obviously on the technical side. Obviously, we're focused for you guys and a lot of challenges is having those clean handoffs, obviously meeting expectations…you guys know the shtick by now. You're having slow time to value—all of these things perpetuate when you don't have an optimal environment to do everything I just talked about, and more, of course, with that. So these are the things we're seeing.

You probably can look in the mirror and say, yes, some of these things are happening for us. We could do this. We could do that. That's a great takeaway. And you don't, you know, whether you want to use Engage or not, I always love to share information and just trends of what we're seeing and how it's basically hurting a lot of businesses because they are losing that money. They are losing many things. And quite frankly, we're seeing a lot of clients leveraging our platform because they got to do more with less. I mean, times are tight for a lot of organizations. Pressure is to be able to do more and be more effective at that. And so obviously our ecosystem, our product Engage, helps with that a ton.

But again, think about this, might be on your nugget to own. Maybe you're a VP of sales, maybe the owner of the business—whatever size company you're at, or what department you have, something to consider as you're going through that.

[29:54] Screen showing slide:  Need and Solution Consideration

29:55 – 33-:55

Joseph Knecht: Need and Solution Considerations

All right, couple of things before I wrap up, and then I will jump into our product, even though I always do basically a half hour of this—give or take, and then I'll just high level go through our product just in case anybody's interested. You know, some of you have seen it through our sites or are customers of ours, or whatever, but I will, in about 4 minutes, do a video of that, too. Just real quick—just to bring things to life around these trends. And again, how we learn about this is all of our great customers. These trends are not created by us. They're the trends that our clients are coming to us as problems clearly, and then we're helping them solve that. And so I'm just pushing these out to you. We have some really good resources on our website also. Besides this webinar, of course, the recording, we have really good audit books and articles and insights.

I also do kind of—I call them field notes—they're real short videos. But they're basically direct client experiences, like, I literally am at a client's office or flying on the plane. And I'm like, here's what we just saw with them, and how we're solving it, so you might get some good ideas for your enterprise just with those. And again, a lot of them have nothing to do with our product. They're just things we're seeing, and many do obviously relate with, you know, operational success.

So with these trends, as you can probably imagine, there's a need for an environment basically to help solve these problems. And for most of our clients, it's again switching from obviously, paper based, or you know, email based and just camp-run- amuck, basically of solutions. So our platform Engage, provides a lot of these things with that secure environment. Security is a big deal, centralizing that information is a big deal, and then operationalizing everything that we were talking about, from data collection to checklist systems to tasks, accountability…you name it, all of that in one centralized ecosystem makes that last 25% of the sale extremely more successful.

And then, of course, that helps translate directly to the handoffs and onboarding within our product. So one solution for all 3 major revenue use cases for your environment, some just straight up results we see, for sure, 30% improved engagement. That's for sure, higher in many other use cases, time to value for customers, obviously huge—what we were talking about.

And operationally, we're not going to get into it or anything. But we help our clients convert them from the flat world email to basically a digitally based experience and with automations and all sorts of efficiencies at minimum, you're going to be 25% more efficient, like, like, literally a minimum.

From there, it yeah, really kind of camp-run-amuck for a lot of our clients, because we're really helping with all the centralization. We integrate with Salesforce and other solutions—just really creating a lot of visibility to the process. So of course, it's a webinar about us. We're great, as you might expect, that's what I was going to say. But it's true, right? I mean, like we just methodically care about making our clients be more effective in what they're doing there. So I appreciate the time, effort and energy from here. What I'm going to do, anybody who was signed up today for these obviously, I'll be shipping out the PowerPoint for that. And also the video, I am going to shift in case people want to stay around or whatever—I'm going to shift to just kind of high level just showing our platform. Again, this is not a demo. It's not the intent. If you want to personally meet with myself, or any members of our team, I encourage you going out to all our other webinars. You can sign up for a one-on-one disco, you know where we get to understand your business and apply—because there's a lot to this, as you might imagine—to really help you take your processes to the next level. So I encourage you, schedule time, and we'd love to help unpack some of your, you know, challenges opportunities in detail. And so appreciate that.

[33:55] Screen showing slide:  Workspace Team and various screens from A Workspace Experience

33:55 – 38:51

Joseph Knecht: Workspace Team

So with that, I'm going to shift gears…just to the solution set. So this is what we call a workspace team. So let me contextually help you out here. So this is a fake, obviously workspace, for a fake hospital. Like, let's say our company was onboarding a hospital. This is what we call a workspace experience. So this is a secure environment between your company, and obviously in this conversation, we're talking about the last 25% of the sale process, which you can see for a lot of our clients is structured like this. They usually have a discovery. They have meet the team, they have demos and meetings, they have resources. You might have all sorts of other stuff.

This is all obviously configurable in our platform. And today's not a demo, just trying to help you envision an environment here, right? So we've talked about a lot of the trends which are real. And they're happening every single day. This Workspace is typically then created in that last 25% of the sale to help take that client through the risky discovery process, and you're going to be sharing and collaborating on a ton of documentation, obviously, through the tool, you're going to have…be sharing all the demos, if you do demos, meeting recaps—all your prototypical alignment kind of activities to help better qualify that client. We typically do that through some sort of like checklist process, which is kind of a visual way and actionable way of sharing information, editing information. You guys, of course, this is all…there's all tool sets to do everything here.

The tool supports all your marketing information, of course. This is very popular for a lot of our onboarding specialists during the last 25%...is you can have different file processes and form processes, to capture data from the clients in a clean way. Quite frankly, we have a lot of clients that they're capturing data from their clients during the sales process in forms like this, and then they're importing that into their tool, to rapidly reduce the actual setup times also—so that's something—if that resonates with anybody, love to chat about that.

But ultimately we have a workspace environment like this, that has all of these proven modules and tools to communicate, collaborate, do things on. Again, this is customer facing. So the customer actually might have tasks and follow ups, right? Again the whole adage of our platform is that you do one thing, the tool’s going to do 6 things for you. For instance, if you downloaded…the customer downloaded a template, or a proposal, or whatever, the system waits 20 minutes and then automatically DM’s them. “Hey, Tom, Tiffany, do you have any questions? I see you downloaded the proposal,” right?

We're fully integrated with Slack and Teams, fully integrated with Salesforce and HubSpot, your email, you name it. Basically, it creates this harmonized experience for communicating, collaborating in that last 25%, as you imagine, right off into your onboarding process with handoff, kickoff. All of this, of course, customizable. You guys all have your own processes and stuff. All of that gets mapped into the tool into templates which are highly reusable…measurable… everything.

Okay, so this 30,000 foot, that's what our platform does. Obviously, all in one ecosystem to navigate all of those trends that we're talking about. So sales keeps doing what sales does, until they get to the point where the rubber hits the road, because we know a lot of times salespeople don't want to go through the extra effort, or just because they're going through so much high volume—these workspaces are typically created again, where that transfer of this is getting real—the company is qualified, right? We know that they're legit. They have the buying, want and desire, and the budget to do it.

This is, then, when your teams—it’s me, everybody's coming in—to basically then, get them aligned for success. Of course we have proposal modules all sorts of things again, to help with that complete sales process. From your perspective, it's completely the reverse way. Obviously, that's the client facing side of it. But you, as an onboarding leader, have all the analytics, visibility of everything that is going on during that last 25% all the way through to obviously the handoff and more. Whether that's your analytics, any checklists that are actually running, any of the files that you're running. All of these things are all centralized for you...again, today's not a demo, but just kind of helping you understand that everything's in one place to make this very, very efficient for all of those experiences that we talked about there. So look forward to at some point, talking to you all, or either me, or some other member of the Engage team.

Appreciate the time—we'll be packaging up again, this video and PowerPoint for your own consumption. If you have anything that you'd like to personally talk about, about your business, then obviously, just off of our corporate site, you can sign up for a disco and probably me. If we recognize the name we'll sit with you and help answer any questions you might personally have about different elements with your enterprise. So again, I appreciate it…before we hop off, any questions from the group on today?

Well, that's disappointing. I do “Oprah style.” So that was going to be a Ford Ranger pickup truck for free if somebody had a question. But we'll have to hold that for the next webinar. I'm joking, obviously, but I appreciate it. Everybody, have a great day, and I look forward to talking with you.

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